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The Old Witches Code - Herbs

We’ve all heard the old tales of witches making potions with ingredients such as wing of bat, and eye of newt and many other strange and weird things, many of these old tales are based on hearsay, stories told by one generation to the other, about the witch or healer that lived among them in the old days, eventually writers like Hans Christian Anderson, the brothers Grim and even Shakespeare put these tales to paper.

Now as farfetched as all of this may seem a lot of it is actually true in a way, at least it was very true to the ones telling the tales, witches and healers used to call herbs by strange names like these.

Some of the names were given to herbs simply because the users did not know or even care to know the Latin or modern names for them, others used the name as a sort of code that would allow them to treat the community without giving away the secrets of their trade, often these secrets were the only thing keeping them from being cast out of the community, and for some it was nothing more than a form of “Headology” (See: The Wintersmith – Terry Pratchett).

Here is a list of common codes used and the true meaning behind them.

Adders Tongue

Plantain

Bats Wing

Holly Leaf

Bats Wool

Moss

Blood

Elder Sap

Bloody Fingers

Foxglove

Brains

Gum from a Cherry tree

Bulls Blood

Horehound

Corpse Candles

Mullein

Dragons Scales

Bistort Leaves

Ear of an Ass

Comfrey

Ears of a Goat

St Johns Wort

Eyes

Daisy

Fingers

Cinquefoil

Hair

The Unexpanded frond
from a male fern

Heart

Walnut

Lions Tooth

Dandelion

Skin of Man

Fern

Skull

Skullcap Mushroom

Snake

Bistort

Tongue of Dog

Hounds Tongue

Urine

Dandelion

Worms

Thin Roots

Teeth

Pine Cones

These animals represented the following herbs:

Blue Jay

Bay Laurel

Cat

Catnip

Dog

Couchgrass

Frog

Cinquefoil

Hawk

Hawkweed

Lamb

Lettuce

Lizard

Calamint

Nightingale

Hop

Rat

Valerian

Toad

Sage

Weasel

Rue

Woodpecker

Peony

And when a certain part of something was needed, the following herbs were used: